Ch. 481The First Sacrifice! Over a Million Dead!
Plot points and events
- Xuanyuan Cang seals the border town inside a vast black cage, alarming the nobles, soldiers, Transcendentalists, and others gathered there.
- He reveals that the Human Alliance was founded to fulfill his centuries-old dream of immortality. Having absorbed the power of the world’s three great spiritual veins, he says he needs everyone present to complete the process.
- Xuanyuan claims their souls will become part of his power and calls this transformation a form of continued existence. The crowd recognizes that he intends to sacrifice them for his own immortality.
- People protest and flee, but a second barrier traps them. Xuanyuan’s black light spreads across the assembly ground, slowing and consuming everyone it touches.
- The victims plead, accuse him of betrayal, and recall their years of service. Xuanyuan ignores them. Their bodies disappear as their souls merge into his power.
- After more than a million people have been consumed, Xuanyuan declares, “You have done your part. I will do the rest.” The site is left completely empty.
Character developments
- Xuanyuan Cang drops his public pretense and reveals himself as willing to sacrifice the people who built his Alliance for personal immortality. His calmness and refusal to respond to their pleas underscore his ruthlessness.
- The gathered followers shift from confusion and fear to anger, grief, and despair as they understand they have been betrayed. Their protests give voice to their lost faith and years of loyalty.
Significant themes
- Betrayal and exploitation: Xuanyuan turns the Alliance’s loyalty and sacrifices into fuel for his own ambition.
- Power and dehumanization: He reframes mass murder as a “transformation,” denying his victims’ right to define what survival means.
- False promises of legacy: The chapter questions whether people can be said to live on when their identities and agency are erased.
- Ambition at any cost: Xuanyuan’s pursuit of immortality outweighs the lives of more than a million people.
Character interactions
- Xuanyuan addresses the crowd as supposed beneficiaries of his dream, while the gathered people challenge his claims and expose the contradiction between his promises and his actions.
- Several victims confront him with specific grievances: their years of service, the lives they took for him, his past assurances that the Alliance would not abandon its members, and the families left behind.
- Xuanyuan offers no answer beyond his final declaration, leaving the crowd’s accusations unanswered as the sacrifice proceeds.